


So Like Fear

by Lunamionny



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hermione/George endgame, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Smut, POV George Weasley, Post-War, no infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22759414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunamionny/pseuds/Lunamionny
Summary: Angelina would always come to him at night, the sorrow in her eyes hidden by the dark sky. The sex, like the alcohol and the potions, helped him forget. Just for a few moments. It helped him forget, whereas it helped her remember. Hermione, though, would always come to him during the day, when sorrow could not hide from the bright glare of the summer sun....As George succumbs to the desolation of grief, two women enter his life and impact on it in very different ways.
Relationships: Angelina Johnson/George Weasley, Hermione Granger/George Weasley
Comments: 25
Kudos: 80
Collections: Love Fest 2020





	So Like Fear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaraudingManaged](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaraudingManaged/gifts).



> This is for MaraudingManaged as part of LoveFest 2020 and in response to her prompt 'George/Hermione, fixing what was broken' - I hope you don't mind the inclusion of Angelina amongst all this angst! 
> 
> Warning: grief is a major theme of this little ficlet. 
> 
> The quotes in italics are from the book ‘A Grief Observed’ by C.S. Lewis (because he’s described grief much better than I ever could).
> 
> Huge thanks to Frumpologist for her alpha and beta-ing help!

Angelina would always come to him at night, the sorrow in her eyes hidden by the dark sky. 

She first came to him on the evening of Fred’s funeral, knocking quietly on his front door, even though she’d been Apparating directly into his flat for months - directly into his brother's bedroom.

“I just - I just didn’t want to be alone,” she said quietly, looking up at him with a guarded expression. 

George’s thoughts were slowed and dulled from having drunk half a bottle of firewhiskey and he only remembered the night in fragments after that: Angelina sitting beside him on the sofa, knocking back shots of whiskey...their thighs pressing against each other’s...her gaze roaming his face with a desperate intensity.

“You have his eyes, you know?” she slurred, reaching out and tracing a finger down his cheek, running her thumb over his lips. “And his mouth. Your mouth is exactly the same…” 

The whiskey and her touch numbed George to the pain that had been relentlessly twisting his insides since the sun had risen over a devastated Hogwarts six weeks earlier. And so, when Angelina leaned forward to kiss him, he’d let her. 

* * *

Hermione would always come to him during the day, when sorrow could not hide from the bright glare of the summer sun. 

She first came to him a week after Fred’s funeral, after she’d returned from Australia with her parents and their restored memories in tow. She beared an oven dish covered in foil and a plaintive, hopeful smile. 

“I brought lasagne,” she declared. “My dad always cooks too much.” 

George didn’t have any appetite, hadn’t eaten properly in weeks, but Hermione remained standing on his doorstep expectantly, and he couldn’t find the words to turn her away. He let her in, somehow finding the humility in his hungover-drunken stupor to feel ashamed of the piles of dirty clothes that littered his flat, the half eaten toast, the empty bottles of beer and vials of potions. 

“Shall I put it in the fridge for later? Or shall I heat some up now?” Hermione asked as they entered his kitchen. 

“Maybe...I don’t know...” and he trailed off, finding the innocuous decision far too hard. 

Hermione looked at him guardedly, and it was both alike and different to the expression that Angelina often bore. Angelina’s features were often schooled into an expression of defensiveness, as if she was afraid he was about to take away something she loved and coveted. Hermione’s expression was beseeching, as if she were afraid he would refuse something she wanted to give him.

“Maybe I’ll heat some up now,” she offered. 

George noticed how she took in his dishevelled hair and stained clothes, but the numbing bliss of the alcohol meant he didn’t care.  He nodded and went to sit on his sofa, contemplating whether he should make an attempt at tidying. But his eyelids were feeling so, so heavy and he thought how lovely it would be to fall into the depths of a dreamless sleep…. 

When he awoke, probably hours later, the empty bottles and vials had been cleared away, his clothes sat in clean, folded piles and, to his mild annoyance, his stash of whiskey had disappeared. 

* * *

Angelina always wanted to look him in the eyes when they fucked. If he turned his head away as she rode on top of him, she would reach out a hand, cup his jaw, and gently guide his head back so their gazes locked. If he closed his eyes, she’d lean to his ear and whisper, “Let me see you.” 

She would always come then, when she was looking intently into his eyes. They rarely spoke. She would often silence his words with a kiss - either passionate or tender - and he knew why: when he spoke, he did not sound like his brother. His voice was a different timbre, a different tone, and it spoilt the wretched, hopeless pretence that Angelina so desperately clung to. 

The sex, like the alcohol and the potions, helped him forget. Just for a few moments. It helped him forget, whereas it helped her remember. 

* * *

Hermione, also, kept returning to him.

“I got a casserole this time, and my dad makes the  _ best  _ casserole,” she said, smiling conspiratorially.

“Right,” George replied vaguely and led her through to his kitchen. 

He didn’t know why he kept letting her in when he often refused to see his own siblings or parents. Maybe it was the fact that she  _ wasn’t  _ family, so he didn’t see his own grief reflected in her face. When he was around his family, it always felt as if there was a huge hole, an abyss - gaping and obscene - where Fred used to be. George always felt a need to fill it; fill the inevitable silences with talking - even jokes - but lately, the thought of trying to do that was exhausting and impossible, so he’d started to avoid them.

Hermione placed the casserole on the kitchen counter. “I’ll heat some up for us now. I’m quite peckish,” she said. 

She was never solemn, but at the same time not brashly chirpy either. He never saw pity in her eyes and George appreciated that more than anything.

“Right,” he repeated. 

She moulded herself into his weekday mornings and weekend afternoons. His flat felt empty and hollow when he was alone, and she seemed to fill it with bustling, making endless cups of tea, sitting beside him on the sofa and prattling about her day. He never said much, but he listened, and felt relieved when it was clear that she didn’t expect anything more from him. 

She left dishes of food in her wake - in his fridge or freezer - alongside cleaned and tidied services. And books. She often left books, peppered about his flat as if they’d grown there all by themselves. He tried to read them, but his shattered concentration span wouldn’t let him get past the first few pages. 

She would often go to the mirror that sat on his side table. Like all the mirrors in his flat, it was turned around, rudely baring its opaque back to the room. She would look from the mirror to him and back again, but didn’t ask why he had shunned all reflective services in such a way. He knew she was clever enough to understand that to look at his own reflection would be a self-inflicted torment. 

“Have you been out much?” she asked casually, even though they both knew the question was loaded with meaning. 

He shook his head. He rarely left his flat. The outside world seemed far too overwhelming. 

“Your mother’s a bit worried about you, George,” Hermione remarked softly, about a month after her first visit. The way she said his name sounded like an embrace. A warm, gentle hug.

“I’m fine,” he lied. 

Hermione just nodded and started scrambling around in her bag. She pulled out a book, laid it on the table and left without saying another word. 

* * *

“This is wrong,” George said regretfully into the dark of his bedroom as Angelina lay next to him, their bodies warm and breathing uneven. He’d come inside her just moments before. “I’m not him. I never will be.” 

The silence stretched between them. He eventually turned to her and saw her eyes glistening. 

“I know,” she stated. 

Fred had died under the rubble of Hogwarts. The castle had ruptured apart and cascaded down on his body, crushing his bones and all the air out of his lungs. Fred had never liked school, had spent many hours flooding its corridors or collapsing its ceilings in the name of comedy, but George had never thought that the building would exact such revenge on his twin.

“Do you wish it had been me instead of him?” George asked flatly. 

Angelina’s lips stretched into a melancholic smile. “No. Because then he would have been as sad and wretched as you are now, and I don’t think I could have beared his pain.” 

“But you can bear mine.”

“As much as you can mine.” 

Still she came, and still he let her. 

* * *

The last book Hermione had given him was about loss and grief - the anguish and the agony of it - and about the possibility of what could come afterwards. 

He struggled through the first few pages, but found himself devouring the rest:  _ No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in… _

_ I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process…. _

_ Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything... _

George rose from the sofa and walked slowly over to his back-to-front mirror. He turned it around and stared at his reflection. 

_ Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. _

_ But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. _

* * *

“We have to stop,” he told Angelina the next time he saw her. “It’s not good...it’s not good for either of us.” 

He knew she could tell he meant it - there was a finality in his tone that hadn’t been there before. She reached out again, stroked her fingers down his cheek, and smiled mournfully. “Okay.”

Before she left for the last time, she turned to him and said, “I’m sorry. If - if I made things harder -” 

He reached out to clasp her hand. “No. No, don’t be sorry. He loved you, you know? And even if I loved you the way he did, it still wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be enough.” 

Her eyes shined with unshed tears again. “I know. I know that,” she said gently. She leant forward and gave him a chaste kiss on the lips. “Thank you, George,” she said before finally walking away. 

* * *

The next time Hermione sat curled on his sofa, George found that words came much more easily to him. They talked about C.S. Lewis and grief and life and love. 

“Molly said you’re coming for Sunday lunch this weekend?” 

George nodded.  Hermione grinned, and he felt warmth clench at his heart when he saw that something he was doing was making her happy. 

“There was somewhere - somewhere I wanted to go before mum’s and I wondered - I wondered if you’d come with me?” 

“Oh - where?” she asked, her eyebrows raised with gentle curiosity. 

“I - I wanted to visit Fred’s grave. I haven’t been since the funeral and thought -'' he faltered. He wasn’t sure what he thought. 

Hermione reached out and took his hand, squeezing it hard and not letting go. The action felt natural, as if their fingers had been made to be entwined together. 

“Of course. Of course I’ll come with you.” 

They sat there for some moments in silence, their hands clasped and resting on the sofa between them. It was a tender silence, a welcome silence. A silence George didn’t feel the need to fill. 

**Author's Note:**

> Your comments and thoughts are cherished and treasured.


End file.
